Contentions

This sounds eerily familiar. Dallas police are looking for Yaser Abdel Said, a Muslim, in connection with the murder of his two teenage daughters. Amina Yaser Said and Sarah Yaser Said were shot to death. Police found their bodies in a taxi parked at a local hotel. Their father was a taxi driver. From the Dallas Morning News:

Officer Tull said there have been some “domestic issues” with the family, but he did not elaborate.

Police did say they are looking into the possibility that the father was upset with his daughters’ dating activities.

In December, Toronto cab driver Muhammad Parvez strangled his 16-year-old daughter Aqsa Parvez for refusing to wear a hijab, the traditional Islamic headscarf. Keep that in mind while reading about the two dead Texas teens: “[A friend of the girls] said the sisters, who wore typical American clothes, didn’t talk much about their family. ‘I didn’t know they were Muslims until she told me they were Egyptian and Muslim,’ Liz said.”

In the Parvez case, the Canadian media twisted themselves into pretzels as they strove not to call the girl’s murder an honor killing; in fact, it seemed newspapers only wrote of it in order to attack those who did name it as such. If this double-murder turns out to be an honor killing as well, don’t expect to see anything different. The press cares so much about fundamentalist Muslims’ feelings there’s simply no room left in their hearts for victims of ritualistic murder.